The Houston Press gives readers something they don’t get anywhere else around here -- a close-up, behind-the-scenes look at what’s really going on where they live. From the irreverent "Hair Balls" column to in-depth investigative and feature stories and entertainment...

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There are some truly brilliant authors who have such deep moral lapses that if we'd known about them before we probably never would've read any of their works no matter how brilliant. That was the key to putting together this list.

Martin Atkins has played with just about every metallic industrial band that matters, and released many more on his 20-year-old Invisible Records imprint. These days he's also the author of Tour:Smart, a universally acclaimed soup-to-nuts guide to life on the road now in its second printing.

It's not an easy thing to find out which books the Texas prison system has barred from inmates. But we found a way around it: We asked for a year's correspondence between the TDCJ mailrooms seeking rulings on inmate material and the "Director's Review Committee" that screens the books and magazines. Here's what we found.